


Photographs and Memories

by tirsynni



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tirsynni/pseuds/tirsynni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When war-battered Erik Lehnsherr met Charles Xavier, the man kneeling in the dirt and whispering to a lost refugee child, Erik feared his days of running from his deviance was done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photographs and Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mabyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabyn/gifts).



> Written for **mabyn** for the Secret Mutant holiday exchange. This is based on the prompt: Historical AU (you pick the time and place). Erik struggles with shame and oppression related to his sexuality. He's determined to bury his desires, but then he meets Charles. Their romance starts as a single indiscretion, but Erik finds he can't stay away. After some angst, they resolve to stay together, although whether they are able to have a public or secret relationship in the end is up to you and the historical realities of the 'verse you choose.

Erik Lehnsherr first met Charles Xavier when he was escorting refugees onto Charles’s land. As the Nazis grew in power and violent antisemitism grew along with whispers of death and blood, England reluctantly accepted the Jewish people inside her borders. Not many, not nearly as many as needed, but people like Xavier opening their doors to the refugees helped.

Still, Erik expected to hate Xavier: rich, young, white man oh-so-generously opening his doors in charity, keeping his own hands clean and pure. Mother and stepfather dead, with rumors of an absent stepbrother, Charles Xavier was apparently the lone heir to a property which extended farther than Erik’s eyes could see. Was this a rich boy claiming charity and doing his part for the war while hiding in his ivory tower? While Erik tucked a gun in his boot and pants and comforted himself with lethal metal, helping fools who did the bare minimum to help Erik’s own people?

Then Erik saw Charles Xavier for the first time, and Erik’s inner battle shifted to something far bitterer and far worse.

Dressed in simple trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, Charles Xavier knelt on the ground listening to a tiny girl – five at most – chattering in broken English. His knees were dirty, his hands were worse with their broken nails and dark scabs, and there was a smudge of dirt on one pale cheek. Still, he smiled at the girl and directed her to what could only be described as a castle. Then his eyes – the brightest blue Erik had ever seen – fastened on Erik, and Erik knew he was lost.

For a long moment, Xavier knelt on the ground, those eyes fastened on Erik’s. There was something wide and dazed there, almost a recognition: _I know you._ Like the air was water and they were drowning and Erik couldn’t look away from those damned eyes.

At last, Xavier stood and the moment wavered, popped as gently as a bubble. Erik sucked in a shaky breath as Xavier focused on the dirt on his pants, brushing at them like his filthy hands could make any difference. Erik didn’t think about his mama or her words or her dreams and straightened his spine, hardened his heart.

Xavier’s laugh was thin, unsteady, and did nothing to make Erik feel better. “My apologies. You must be Erik Lehnsherr. Moira told me to expect you.”

Even his voice was sweet.

Erik nodded, not trusting his own voice. A question boiled inside him – _Are you like me?_ – and it was too tempting to let it steam free. He held out a hand. Xavier only hesitated a moment over his own dirty palm before taking Erik’s hand.

“Please, call me Charles. Come, let me show you around.”

His mama told him as the whispers grew louder and darker, as the fear heightened and the thud of boots took over their world, to not worry. One day he would find the one, and he would _know_ , just like she did, and it would be the most wonderful thing in the world.

The betrayal of it all was like a bullet between the eyes.

~~~~

For years, Erik fought his deviance. He said his prayers three times a day and did not act on his urges. He married his childhood friend Magda and started a family: himself, Magda, and their beloved Anya. He kept his beautiful, wonderful wife pleased in the bedroom as was his duty. He taught Anya about her departed grandmother and gave her Edie’s dreidel. When things in Poland grew too intense, he arranged them passage to England, where they would be safe.

Then the Nazis came. Magda and Anya burned.

Max became Erik, and he went Nazi hunting.

~~~~

The Xavier mansion had enough rooms to pass for a grand hotel. Servants greeted the refugees inside and assisted them to the different rooms while a cook prepared lunch in the kitchen. Erik passed other refugees from Germany, Poland, and a scattering of other countries. He recognized little Ororo, an African girl with shocking white hair. She wasn’t Jewish but, according to rumors, Hitler raved about witchcraft and added soothsayers and the like to his count, unless, also according to the gossip, he was able to hire them himself. The whispers of Ororo, with her unearthly grace and unusual hair, were enough to have the Nazis target her.

She was the only one of her family who survived.

The refugees looked well under Xavier’s care, if Erik ignored the shadows in their eyes. There was nothing he could do to help them with that.

Xavier tried to speak to Erik three more times before he caught that his presence was unwanted. With a strained smile which cut at Erik, Xavier vanished into the depths of the mansion. His slender hips held a more pleasing sway than anything Magda could ever manage.

Erik dismissed his guilt with the ease of extensive and intensive practice. He looked around the mansion again, with its fine floor and high ceilings and echoing hollowness, and walked back to the truck. Something about the place reminded him of the battleground, and the incongruity of it chilled him.

He felt Xavier’s eyes on him as he left. For weeks after, Erik struggled not to touch himself to the memory of brilliant blue eyes and a too-red mouth.

~~~

Inevitably, Erik returned with another truck full of refugees, and inevitably, Charles Xavier waited, too pretty and too fair with dirt in his brown mess of hair.

In the time it took for Erik to gather this batch of refugees and coordinate their travel over England’s reluctant borders, Xavier had transformed the mansion more into a true camp. Erik recognized some of the people meeting the truck as the refugees he brought on the last trip. Little Kitty, barely a teenager, led the march, almost unrecognizable in her clean and fitted clothes. She directed the exhausted group like a general on the battlefield, and yes, there was little Ororo beside her, silent and watchful and calm. Medical staff crossed the lawn to join them, uniforms clean and bags with red crosses on them tossed over tense shoulders.

Xavier walked beside Erik and watched the latest group being led into the mansion. Maybe it was Xavier’s pallor which prompted Erik to remain still instead of fleeing, or maybe it was the blueness of his eyes, brought out by the bloodshot red around the irises. Regardless, when Xavier stood close enough for his shoulder to brush Erik’s arm, he did not move.

“Come inside?” Xavier asked, and this close, Erik could smell him, sweat and musk and the hint of cinnamon. Perhaps his soap? “You have a long way to go after this. You might as well rest.”

Tired and worn but those damnable eyes still shone with hope when Xavier turned to him. Erik looked away in time to see the last of his refugees vanish into the mansion, the home towering over all of them.

“Yes,” Erik agreed, and thought of Magda and bullets and flames and tall metal gates, candles flickering before being snuffed out. “I would appreciate some rest.”

Xavier smiled at him. Erik felt he had agreed to far more than rest, but he refused to look back when Xavier led him inside. Xavier led him first to the kitchen, where the cook gave them sandwiches to take upstairs to a small study. Soon, for the first time in three years, Erik found himself sitting before a chessboard: black on his side, white on Xavier’s.

Everything, from the moment he drove his truck to Xavier’s to the moment he sat across from Xavier in the warm light of the fireplace, felt inevitable. Erik played and played abysmally, watching as Xavier took piece after piece, sturdy fingers clever on the chessboard. Only when Xavier whispered, “Checkmate,” did Erik look up into Xavier’s eyes.

“My friend,” Xavier whispered, fair face flushed, “you are not alone.”

Everything had seemed inevitable. Falling into Xavier’s arms, even moreso.

~~~~

Erik woke first. Xavier’s bedroom was still dark, no sunlight creeping through loosely drawn curtains. Xavier was a heavy weight on his right arm, all limp warmth and the faint scent of cinnamon. In the shadows of the room, his pale skin almost glowed.

He looked beautiful.

Erik kissed those lips – still swollen and slick – and pushed himself away. Pain and grief burned inside him, but Erik pushed that away, too. He pushed it all away.

“Good-bye, Charles,” he whispered.

Erik didn’t look back when he left, the image of Charles peaceful and dreaming entrenched behind his eyelids. It would be another two years before he saw Charles Xavier again.

 

~~~~

 

Erik Lehnsherr carried no photographs in his possession. All of his photographs of Magda and Anya burned with them and their home. He had no physical proof of how Magda would raise one unimpressed eyebrow at him when he tried to convince her of something when he really should have known better. He had no way to show anyone how brightly his little Anya had smiled. The closest he had to photographs were his memories, and he only pulled them out late at night, when he had the freedom to examine and love them without interruption.

After leaving the Xavier mansion, memories of Charles Xavier joined the collection.

Charles Xavier with dirt on his hands and face, of his bruised but hopeful blue eyes, of how sweetly he took Erik into his generous mouth.

At first, the memories were shameful, brought out only in the deepest and darkest parts of the night, but as the war raged on and Erik accepted that he would probably not see the other side of it, it became easier to bring them out. Charles, smiling over the chessboard. Charles, smiling at him before closing his eyes and going to sleep, trusting as a child. Those memories and the realization that Charles was safe in England, protecting his refugees from the war, helped bring serenity to Erik’s rage.

So the last thing Erik Lehnsherr ever expected to see when he returned to camp was Charles Xavier in a British uniform. The man didn’t match his memories: too thin, hollows under his eyes, and a rough beard growing around his jaw. Yet his smile remained the same, lighting up his face when he saw Erik.

“My friend!” Charles – Xavier, dear G-d, he needed to be Xavier here – greeted while Erik struggled with his racing thoughts. “I did not expect to see you here.”

Erik’s mouth was dry. “Likewise,” he croaked, the word scraping out of his mouth like barbed wire. “What…what are you doing here?”

Their temporary base was small, an old wooden house abandoned in the woods. The dark red blood stained into the floorboards gave them all the information they needed about its previous inhabitants. Erik’s men found and claimed it two days prior. All Jewish soldiers, made up of those who had successfully fled from Poland and Germany when the Nazis rose to powers, they whispered prayers over the dried blood and then cleaned their guns, eyes as hard as iron. They were good men, all of them. Erik had met some of them when transporting the refugees to C-- Xavier’s home. They milled outside now, preparing for the next morning’s march further into military territory. Erik found himself as aware of their positions now as he had been when they were on the battlefield.

If Xavier was aware of the tension, he gave no sign. He dug into his jacket – it looked too big on him, made him look _small_ – and pulled out an envelope. “I was sent to find Magnus and provide him with this.”

“I am Magnus,” Erik answered automatically, hand out. Then he understood what was behind Xavier’s words, and his eyes narrowed. “They sent you here alone?”

Xavier’s responding smile was thin and brittle, not matching Erik’s memories. “I am quick and clever, and I’m excellent at hiding. It was easier for one man to hide from enemy forces and find you than a team.”

That did nothing to make Erik feel better. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Almost two years.” Xavier nodded at the letter still in Erik’s hand. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

Erik’s fingers felt numb as he opened the letter. His mind translated the code without any extra effort, allowing most of his energy to focus on Xavier’s damning words: almost two years. Two years when he dreamed of Xavier safe and sound.

“Rerouting to Paris,” he murmured. “Assist the French Resistance.”

There was more than that: hinting of additional concentration camps. That was Erik’s true objective, hidden within other orders. There was still little information on the camps themselves. Their primary information focused on those who vanished into the camps.

“I am to assist you,” Xavier said. “In whatever you need.”

He spoke without inflection, without hinting of that Erik could possibly need, but Erik felt heat coil in his stomach, nonetheless. During their lone night together, Xavier made it clear that Erik was not the first male body he had known.

Was Erik the last, though? No matter what Erik did, he could never defeat that thought.

Xavier’s eyes met his, and Erik knew he wasn’t imagining the heat there. “I won’t let you down.”

Erik nodded and with a lighter, burnt the letter. The fire singed his fingers, but he barely felt it.

He barely felt anything but the heat rising inside him.

~~~~

The house had three bedrooms and a basement, and it was in the basement that Erik knew Charles again for the first time in two years. There was an old mattress, stained and worn, and Erik covered it with his coat before lowering Charles down on it. He tried to be gentle, but Charles would have none of it, biting and sucking and pulling at him until they were both naked and tightly intertwined. They hid their cries in each other’s mouths, kept their teeth to where their clothes could hide the marks.

Afterwards, they laid still together, Erik’s coat over them and Charles’s coat on them, Erik’s men above them on the first floor. Erik stroked Charles’s bare arm, slick with sweat and cooling quickly.

“Should we not speak of this again?” Charles murmured. His own hand rested on Erik’s chest, over his heart. “Say the word and I shall respect your choice.”

Erik knew what he should say: yes. Yes to silence and to self-control, to hiding this deviance.

“No,” he whispered instead, kissing Charles’s temple. “Stay with me.”

The light was dim but Erik saw Charles’s smile, so similar to his memories. “Yes.”

If he was to die on this accursed battlefield, Erik would at least give himself this.

~~~~

If Erik’s men suspected, they saw nothing. Sergeant Pryde nodded at them both when they returned from a tryst, and Charles whispered to Erik that Charles had given Pryde updates about his young daughter, still safely at Charles’s home. He had letters from the girl that he was able to give Pryde, written in hopes that Charles might encounter him. He had other letters, too, in case he found long lost relatives.

“I fear I will carry them forever,” Charles whispered to Erik once, on their way to Paris. He never mentioned those letters again.

Along the way to Paris, Erik and his men maintained their original objective: find Nazis, question them, and kill them. Charles watched it happen twice: Erik’s men stalked the Nazis like tigers, quick and pitiless in their hunt. He paled and was quiet for hours afterwards, but he didn’t hesitate to help when asked. If anything, he added a ruthless efficiency and helped them return to their path quicker than hoped.

“Are you frightened?” Erik asked once, in one of the rare moments when his men could look the other way and he could sneak kisses and touches.

“Terrified,” Charles said, matter-of-fact and brisk in a way only the British could manage. “Now are you going to ask me silly questions or kiss me?”

Erik kissed him.

~~~~

In later years, Erik reflected all the different ways it could have gone down. If he had suspected – even an inkling – he would have done so many things differently. Not just during the fighting, but the night before.

As it was, Erik suspected nothing. At most, he believed, like he had believed for years, that he would die fighting for his people, and Charles would return to England and raise a dozen children, some hopefully even his own, and would forget about the soldier he had met years before. If he had realized he would survive the war, maybe that would have changed some of his actions, too.

Charles led them past the German forces into Paris. The _Wehrmacht_ had occupied northern and western France for the past several years, including its capital. There were rumors of a convoy sending political prisoners to concentration camps, and Charles whispered that soldiers from the colonies (“United States, Charles, you _lost_ that war”) were on their way to assist Paris. Their goal was to focus on the convoy with its political prisoners.

Charles found them a hostel in Pantin. The Parisians there were preparing for their own strike but were polite and helpful, making sure they had food and equipment for the night. Erik’s team divided into small groups to sleep. None commented when Charles and Erik had their own room.

As soon as their door was closed, Charles pounced, mouth on Erik’s and hands tearing at his clothes. Erik laughed and grabbed at his hands. “Easy, easy,” he murmured. “We have all night.”

Charles panted against his mouth, tasting like the coffee the Parisians had given them earlier. It was cheap but strong, rich. “Then shouldn’t we start now?”

Erik laughed and later he would think about how relaxed he was that night, free in a way he hadn’t been since the start of the war. The world was quiet, the calm before the storm, and he thought that perhaps it had been his conviction that he would die which relaxed him. When the end is known, what was there to fear?

Still, he allowed Charles to push him down and strip him. He moaned under Charles’s deft hands and hungry mouth. There was oil in Charles’s bag – a rare prize he admitted to hiding until they could obtain privacy – and Erik bit his own hand to muffle his groans when Charles slid slick fingers into him.

“No matter what happens,” Charles whispered, “we will have this.”

The first night they had been together, Erik had been inside Charles, Charles riding him to completion. No night since had they been safe enough for penetration, so it was the first time Charles had been inside Erik, shorter than Erik but thick, Charles fucking into him with short, sure thrusts. Charles kissed him and devoured each groan and sigh, inhaling Erik’s breath like he would keep some part of him forever.

Later, Erik would wonder if Charles had known something that Erik had not, but for that night, he let Charles sweep him under.

~~~~~

The next morning, the strike in Paris began.

At first, it was the employees of Paris Métro, the Gendarmerie, and police, but by the end of the week, the entire city was on strike. Charles vanished into the crowds, seeking information on the Gestapo and rumors about the Germans planting explosives in the city. Erik and his team did what they could to support the Parisians while gaining information on Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, and Fort de Romainville. They learned that prisoners had already gone out to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. Erik swore they would be the last. Within days, the city descended into chaos, and Erik sought only to fan the flames.

He saw Charles only in passing as the fighting grew worse. Messages were passed on in their hostel before the hostel itself was burned during a skirmish between French and German forces. On August 21st, Erik lost two men, Grimm and Kaplan, when they stopped a German convoy from leaving the city with prisoners of war. Grimm roared out obscenities to the end, finger still on the trigger as he fell.

Erik gathered the rest of his men and sought cover at the Grand Palais. Formerly requisitioned for the Nazis to use for a truck depot and to show off their propaganda, the French Resistance had reclaimed it.

“Appropriate time for a show,” Rosenberg drawled, collapsing on a bed of hay. His daughter, Marsha, was among those safe at Charles’s home in England.

Skivorski laughed on his other side and patted the hay. “A circus show? Really?”

“Really, Samson, and can you not agree that a distraction would be quite nice right now?”

Erik’s heart skipped at that familiar British accent, even as Skivorski argued against the nickname Grimm had given him weeks prior. Charles greeted him with a smile and plopped on the hay beside him.

Erik hadn’t seen him for two days, and it looked like Charles hadn’t stopped in all that time. The man looked pale, except for the oddly ginger beard edging up his cheeks. Charles didn’t wear gloves, and his hands were as filthy as they had been in England, when Charles had been assuring his latest refugees that it was all right, they were safe now.

He looked worn and drawn, but Charles was still a comforting weight against Erik’s side. _Would they throw me out to the Germans if I kissed him now?_ Erik thought bitterly.

“They believe the Americans will reach Paris by tomorrow,” Charles reported, somehow still sounding like he was saying _the colonists_ no matter his actual word choice. “Allied forces are on their way. They –”

Erik couldn’t kiss him, but he could touch their fingers, could at least do that much. Their pinky fingers were wrapped around each other when the Germans opened fire on the Grand Palais.

When Erik gave his report later, he would explain that it wasn’t the hail of bullets that was the problem: it was the hay. The stacks of hay went up in flames as the Germans fired upon the Grand Palais, black smoke filling the building.

People roared orders and people screamed and gunfire and smoke filled Erik’s world. All of his men responded beautifully, not hesitating before pulling out their own weapons and firing back. Erik was able to at least give that much information in his report.

Erik couldn’t see how badly the building was burning, the smoke too thick. Still, he saw it when Charles Xavier screamed and fell, his rifle jarred out of his hands when he hit the dirt.

Erik almost dropped his own rifle as he threw himself to Charles's side. In his mind, his memories were playing, his own photographs. He saw his fierce Magda, cursing her killers even as their house burned. He saw his beautiful Anya the morning before everything had gone down in flames, spinning Edie’s dreidel. He saw Charles the first time he had met him, dirty and tired but still lovely.

This moment would join the memories to be flipped through later, Charles falling to the ground, dirty face twisted more in surprise than pain.

“Charles, Charles,” he whispered, falling to his knees beside him. Charles landed on his stomach, and Erik rolled him onto his back, pulling Charles into his arms. He couldn’t see where Charles was hit but saw that pale face grimace in shock and agony.

“Erik,” he managed. His blue eyes were wet with tears, and that would join Erik’s memories, too, damning him.

Pryde fell to his knees beside him. “We need to go! The smoke is deadlier than the bullets!”

Samson joined them, still standing and rifle on his shoulder. “We’ll cover you. Get him out of here!”

Beyond speech, Erik nodded, slung his own rifle over his shoulders, and gathered Charles into his arms. Charles had been small before he joined the military, but now he was slight, easy to carry. Charles whimpered when he picked him up and terror blanched his already pale features.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Erik whispered. “I have you now, I’ll take care of you.”

Charles just stared at him with wide eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

It wasn’t until then, holding Charles in his arms, that Erik realized that he wanted to survive the war. He wanted to survive and he wanted Charles with him, everyone else be damned. For the first time, he realized that he could possibly survive the war…and Charles might not.

“Hang on,” Erik whispered, over and over, switching from English to Hebrew to Polish and back again. “Just hang on.”

Nothing he said stole the horror from Charles’s face. Only unconsciousness did that.

Charles was still unconscious two days later when Germany surrendered Paris.

~~~~

Charles was spirited away following Paris’s liberation, while Erik and his men assisted with the liberation of Fort de Romainville. It would be another six months before Erik followed him.

~~~~

When Erik finally made his way back to Charles’s mansion, it still looked like a refugee camp. Kitty Pryde shrieked with joy and ran into her father’s arms, Pryde laughing and whispering Yiddish into her hair. Kaplan’s wife and child greeted him with tears and laughter, little Billy a limpet around his father’s neck. There was no sign of Charles.

For a moment, Erik stood, hands in his pockets, watching the spot where he had first seen Charles. His memory provided the moment as clear as a photograph, the moment when he met the man’s eyes for the first time.

Erik swallowed and walked into the mansion.

The mansion was clean and brightly lit, a distant cry from the Grand Palais. Little Ororo – not so little anymore – smiled at Erik before Kitty stole her to introduce her to her family. Marsha shouted as she recognized her father and almost ran over Erik to reach him. Erik recognized Ruth Bat-Seraph, who nodded at him and pointed him toward the kitchen. She had been one of the freedom fighters who helped him find many of the refugees in the first place.

Erik couldn’t find the words for any of them. Hands still in his pockets, he walked toward the kitchen, listening to the echoes of laughter through the house.

Dressed in simple trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, Charles Xavier smiled at a blonde, blue-eyed girl and accepted a mug of what looked like hot chocolate from her. She nodded at him and then grabbed her own off the table. Erik’s breath caught in his chest.

Charles Xavier was in a wheelchair.

It ached like a gut wound, and yet…

Charles was still smiling when he looked up at Erik. His eyes were still the bluest Erik had ever seen.

_I know you_ , Erik thought, and he smiled back. Charles almost dropped his mug in his haste to put it down on the table, hands reaching out for Erik. Erik didn’t hesitate to walk to him, cheeks and chest aching.

He was home.

**Author's Note:**

> This wanted to be much, much longer than it actually was, but I was unable to pull it off due to Nanowrimo and time constraints. I hope it still worked out.


End file.
